A Long Petal of the Sea Read online

  “When will we be able to return to Spain?” Roser asked Victor.

  “Soon, I hope. The Caudillo can’t live forever. But everything depends on the war.”

  “Why is that?”

  “War in Europe is imminent, Roser. It will be a war of ideologies and principles, a war between two ways of understanding the world and life, a war between democracy and Nazis and Fascists, between freedom and authoritarianism.”

  “Franco will align Spain with Hitler. Which side will the Soviet Union be on?”

  “It’s a democracy of the proletariat, but I don’t trust Stalin. He could ally himself with Hitler and become an even worse tyrant than Franco.”

  “The Germans are invincible, Victor.”

  “So they say. That remains to be seen.”

  Those sailing for the first time in the Pacific Ocean were surprised at its name, because it wasn’t in the least peaceful. Like many others who thought they had gotten over their initial seasickness, Roser found herself laid low again by the fury of the waves, but Victor was scarcely affected. While the sea was so rough he was busy in the sick bay helping with the birth of another child.

  After leaving behind Colombia and Ecuador, they entered Peruvian territorial waters. The temperature dropped because they were in the southern winter, and now that the tremendous heat had passed, the passengers’ spirits rose considerably. They were far from the Germans, and there was less possibility that Captain Pupin would change course.

  Approaching their destination with a mixture of hope and fear, they realized from the news on the ship’s telegraph that in Chile opinions were divided, that their situation was the cause of heated discussions in Congress and the press, but they also learned there were plans to help house them and find them work from not only the government but left-wing parties, trade unions, and associations of Spanish immigrants who had arrived much earlier. They would not be left stranded.

  CHAPTER 6

  1939–1940

  Slender is our homeland

  and on its naked blade

  burns our delicate banner.

  —PABLO NERUDA

  “Yes, comrade, it’s time for the garden”

  THE SEA AND THE BELLS

  AT THE END OF AUGUST, the Winnipeg arrived at Arica, the most northerly port in Chile. It was very different from the idea the refugees had of a South American country: there were no exuberant jungles or luminous, palm tree–lined beaches—it looked more like the Sahara Desert. They were told it had a temperate climate and was the driest inhabited region on earth. From the sea they could make out the coastline and a chain of purple mountains in the distance resembling brushstrokes of watercolor against a clear lavender sky. The ship anchored out to sea and shortly afterward a boat appeared, bringing officials from Immigration and the Consular Department of the Foreign Ministry. The captain gave up his cabin so that they could interview the passengers, provide them with identity papers and visas, and tell them which region of the country they were to reside in, according to their skills. In the narrow compartment, Victor and Roser, with Marcel in their arms, presented themselves to a young consular official named Matias Eyzaguirre, who was busy stamping all the visas and adding his signature.

  “It states here that your place of residence will be in the province of Talca,” Matias explained. “But the idea that you’re told where you should settle is some nonsense dreamed up by the Immigration people. In Chile there’s absolute freedom of movement. Don’t pay any attention to it, go wherever you like.”

  “Are you Basque, señor? From your name, I mean…” Victor asked him.

  “My great-grandparents were Basque. Here we are all Chilean. Welcome to Chile.”

  Matias Eyzaguirre had traveled by train to Arica to receive the ship, which arrived several days late due to the problem in Panama. He was one of the youngest members of the Consular Department, and had to accompany his boss. Neither of them was exactly pleased, because they were completely opposed to the policy of accepting the refugees into Chile. They considered them to be a mob of Reds, atheists, and possibly criminals, who were coming to take jobs from Chileans just at a moment when there was terrible unemployment and the country hadn’t yet recovered from the Great Depression or the recent earthquake—but they were determined to do their duty. When they reached the port, they’d boarded a rickety boat that struggled through the waves out to the Winnipeg, where they had to climb a rope ladder swaying in the wind, pulled up by some very rough French sailors. Once on board, Captain Pupin received them with a bottle of cognac and Cuban cigars.

  The officials had heard that Pupin had undertaken this journey against his will and that he detested his human cargo, but he surprised them. It turned out that after sharing his vessel with the Spaniards for a month, Pupin had gradually altered his opinion of them, even though his political convictions were still intact. “These people have suffered a great deal, gentlemen. They are upright, disciplined, and respectful, and are coming to your country ready and willing to work and rebuild their lives,” he told them.

  Matias Eyzaguirre came from a family that considered itself aristocratic, and had been brought up in a Catholic, conservative background. He was against immigration, but like Captain Pupin, when he came face-to-face with the individual refugees—men, women, and children—his views changed. He had been educated at a religious school, and lived his life protected by the privileges his clan enjoyed. His grandfather and father were Supreme Court judges, and two of his brothers were lawyers, so he studied law as his family expected, even though he was not cut out for the profession. He doggedly attended university for a couple of years, and then entered the Foreign Ministry thanks to his family connections. He started from the bottom and by the age of twenty-four, when he found himself stamping visas on the Winnipeg, he had already shown he had the makings of a good public servant and diplomat. In a couple of months he was being sent to Paraguay on his first foreign mission, and he was hoping to do so married, or at least engaged, to his cousin Ofelia del Solar.

  The documentation complete, a dozen passengers were taken off the ship, as there was work for them in the north, and then the Winnipeg sailed on toward the south of Neruda’s “long petal.” The Spanish exiles were agog with silent expectation. On September 2, they glimpsed the outline of Valparaiso, their final destination, and at nightfall the ship dropped anchor outside the harbor. The passengers’ anxiety came close to collective hysteria: more than two thousand eager faces crowded onto the upper deck, waiting for the moment to set foot on this unknown land. However, the port authorities decided that the disembarkation should take place the next day, with early morning light and a calmer atmosphere.

  Thousands of twinkling lights in the port and dwellings on the hills of Valparaiso competed with the stars: it was impossible to tell where the promised land ended and the sky began. Valparaiso was an idiosyncratic city of stairways, elevators, and narrow streets wide enough only for donkeys. Houses hung dizzily from steep hillsides; like almost all ports, it was full of stray dogs, was poor and dirty, a place of traders, sailors, and vices, and yet it was marvelous. From the ship it shone like a mythical, diamond-studded city. Nobody went to sleep that night: they all stayed out on deck admiring the magical spectacle and counting the hours. In the years to come, Victor would always remember that night as one of the most beautiful in his life. The next morning, the Winnipeg finally docked in Chile, with the enormous banner of President Pedro Aguirre Cerda and a Chilean flag draped from its side.

  Nobody on board was expecting the welcome they received. They had been warned so often about the Right’s negative campaign, the Catholic Church’s uncompromising opposition, as well as the proverbial Chilean reserve, that at first they didn’t understand what was going on in the port. The crowds crammed behind barriers with placards and flags of Spain, the Republic, Euskadi, and Catalonia, cheering them in a deafening roar of
welcome. A band played the national anthems of Chile and the Spanish Republic, and hundreds of voices joined in. The Chilean one summed up in a few rather sentimental verses the hospitable spirit and vocation for freedom of the country receiving them: Sweet fatherland, accept the vows given by Chile on your altars, that you will either be the tomb of the free, or the refuge against oppression.

  On deck, battle-hardened combatants who had undergone so many brutal challenges wept openly. At nine, the disembarkation began in single file down a gangway. On shore, each refugee first had to go to a Health Department tent to be vaccinated, and then fell into the arms of Chile, as Victor Dalmau expressed it many years later, when he was able to thank Pablo Neruda personally.

  September 3, 1939, the day of the Spanish exiles’ splendid arrival in Chile, the Second World War broke out in Europe.

  * * *

  —

  FELIPE DEL SOLAR HAD made the journey to the port of Valparaiso the day before the arrival of the Winnipeg because he wanted to be present at what he called a “historic event.” According to his pals in the Club of the Enraged, he was taking things too far. They said his enthusiasm for the refugees was less because he had a kind heart and more because he wanted to annoy his father and his clan.

  Felipe spent most of the day greeting the newcomers, mingling with all those who had gone to receive them, and talking to acquaintances he met. Among the excited crowd on the quayside were members of the government; representatives of the workers and the Catalan and Basque communities with whom he had been in contact in recent months to prepare for the arrival of the Winnipeg; artists, intellectuals, journalists, and politicians. Also present was a doctor from Valparaiso, Salvador Allende, a Socialist Party leader who a few days later would be named health minister. Despite being so young, he was prominent in political circles, admired by some, rejected by others, but respected by all. He had taken part more than once in the gatherings of the Enraged, and when he recognized Felipe del Solar in the crowd, he waved to him from afar. Felipe had managed to secure an invitation to board the special train transporting the newcomers from Valparaiso to Santiago. That gave him several hours to hear firsthand what had happened in Spain; until then he knew only what was reported in the press and what he had gleaned from the testimonies of a few individuals, such as Neruda. Seen from Chile, the Spanish Civil War had been something so remote it was as if it had occurred in another time.

  The train traveled without stopping, but slowed down whenever it came to a railway station, because at each one there was a crowd ready to greet the refugees with flags and songs, as well as meat pies or cakes that they ran with along the tracks to pass in through the carriage windows. In Santiago, such a dense, frantic multitude was waiting for them at the main station it was impossible to move; many of them had climbed the columns and were hanging from the roof beams, shouting greetings, singing, and throwing flowers in the air. The police had to force a way through so that the Spaniards could leave the station and attend the dinner in their honor (with a resoundingly Chilean menu) prepared by the Refugee Committee.

  On the train, Felipe del Solar had heard many different stories, linked by a common thread of misfortune. He ended up between two carriages, smoking a cigarette with Victor Dalmau, who gave him his view of the war from the perspective of the blood and death he had witnessed in the first-aid stations and evacuation hospitals.

  “What we suffered in Spain is a taste of what people are going to suffer all over Europe,” Victor concluded. “The Germans tested out their weaponry on us; they left entire towns reduced to rubble. It will be worse still in the rest of Europe.”

  “For the moment, only England and France are standing up to Hitler, but they’re bound to find allies they can count on. The Americans will have to make up their minds.”

  “And what will Chile’s position be?” asked Roser, who had come out to join them, her child on her back in the same sling she had been using for months.

  “This is Roser, my wife,” said Victor, presenting her.

  “Pleased to meet you, señora. Felipe del Solar, at your service. Your husband has told me about you. Madam is a pianist, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, but please don’t be so formal,” said Roser, repeating her question.

  Felipe told her about the large German colony established in the country for several decades, and mentioned the Chilean Nazis, but added there was nothing to fear, and that Chile would undoubtedly stay neutral in the war. He showed them the list of industrialists and businessmen willing to offer employment to Spaniards depending on their skills, but none of these suited Victor. He would be unable to dedicate himself to the only thing he knew—medicine—without a diploma. Felipe advised him to enroll at the University of Chile, which was free and very prestigious, where he could study. They might possibly recognize the courses he had taken in Barcelona and the knowledge acquired during the war, but even so it would take him years to obtain his title.

  “First of all, I need to earn my living,” replied Victor. “I’ll try to find a night job so that I can study by day.”

  “I need work as well,” observed Roser.

  “It’ll be easy for you. We always need pianists down here.”

  “That’s what Pablo Neruda said,” Victor added.

  “For now, you’re to come and live with me,” Felipe insisted. He had two empty rooms and, in preparation for the arrival of the Winnipeg, had taken on more domestic staff. He now had a cook and two maids, so as to avoid any further conflict with Juana. Her refusal to hand over the keys to the empty rooms in the family home had given rise to the only argument they had had in more than twenty years, but they loved each other too much to allow that to force them apart. When the telegram arrived from his father in Paris making it clear that no Red was to set foot in his house, Felipe had already decided to organize things to receive Spaniards under his own roof. The Dalmau family seemed ideal.

  “I’m really grateful, but I understand the Refugee Committee has found us lodging in a boardinghouse and is going to pay the first six months,” said Victor.

  “I have a piano, and spend all my days at work. You’ll be able to practice without anyone disturbing you, Roser.”

  That clinched it. The house was in a neighborhood that, to the new guests, seemed as grand as the best parts of Barcelona. From the outside it was elegant, and was almost empty on the inside, because Felipe had bought only the most indispensable pieces of furniture: he detested his parents’ fussy style. There were no drapes on the beveled glass windows, no rugs on the parquet floors; there were no flower pots or plants to be seen, and the walls were bare. But despite this lack of decoration, the house had an air of undeniable refinement. The Dalmaus were offered two bedrooms, a bathroom, and the exclusive use of one of the maids, to whom Felipe assigned the role of nanny. Marcel would have someone to look after him while his parents were at work.

  Two days later, Felipe took Roser to a radio station run by a friend of his, and that same evening they invited her to play the piano to accompany a program. This advertised her talent as a soloist and music teacher, and meant she would never be short of work. He also found Victor a job at the bar of the Equestrian Club thanks to the same networking system, where merit was much less important than connections. Victor’s shift was from seven at night to two in the morning, which would allow him to study as soon as he could put his name down for the School of Medicine. Felipe said that would be no problem, because the president of the school was a relative of the Vizcarras, his mother’s family. Victor began hauling crates of beer and washing glasses, until he learned to distinguish between different wines and to prepare cocktails, when he was put behind the bar. He had to wear a dark suit, white shirt, and bow tie, and only had one change of underclothes and the suit he had bought with Aitor Ibarra’s money when he escaped from Argeles-sur-Mer, but Felipe put his entire wardrobe at Victor’s disposal.

 
; Juana Nancucheo held out for a week without asking about Felipe’s lodgers, but in the end her curiosity got the better of her pride and so, armed with a tray of freshly baked bread rolls, she went to see what was going on. The door was opened by the new nanny, with the baby in her arms. “The master and mistress aren’t at home,” she said. Juana pushed her aside and strode in. She inspected everything from top to bottom, and was able to verify that the Reds, as Don Isidro called them, were quite clean and tidy. She looked into the pans in the kitchen and gave orders to the nanny, who she thought looked too young and dumb. “Where’s the mother of the brat traipsing about? A fine thing to have children and abandon them. But I must say, little Marcel is sweet. Big eyes, nice and plump, and not shy at all: he threw his arms around my neck and tugged on my braid,” she later told Felipe.

  * * *

  —

  IN PARIS ON SEPTEMBER 4, 1939, Isidro del Solar was getting his wife used to the idea of the young ladies’ college in London where he had already enrolled Ofelia, when they were caught unaware by the news that war had been declared. The conflict had been looming for months, but Isidro had managed to put the collective apprehension out of his mind, lest it interfere with his vacation. The press was exaggerating. The world was always on the verge of some military confrontation or other: what need was there to get into a state about this one?

  But he only had to open the door of their suite to realize the seriousness of what was going on. Outside there was frenzied activity: hotel staff running to and fro with suitcases and trunks, guests thronging the exit, ladies with their lap dogs, men fighting over taxis, confused children wailing. The streets were in turmoil as well: half the city seemed to want to escape to the countryside until the situation became clearer. The traffic was at a standstill because there were so many vehicles loaded to the roof trying to force their way through rushing pedestrians; loudspeakers were blaring out urgent instructions, while police on horseback tried to keep order. Isidro del Solar was forced to accept that his plans to return calmly to London to drop off his daughter, pick up the latest model automobile he was shipping to Chile, and then embark on the Reina del Pacifico had gone up in smoke. He had to get out of Europe as quickly as possible.